


The world turned upside down

by AssumeEveryoneWithASwordIsQueer



Series: Because we can [1]
Category: Arthurian Mythology, Arthurian Mythology & Related Fandoms
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, F/F, F/M, Fainting, Family Reunions, Gen, M/M, Multi, Other, Post-Canon, Reincarnation, Reunions, Swords & Sorcery, they're probably all gay
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-01-29
Updated: 2021-03-05
Packaged: 2021-03-15 19:33:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 7
Words: 7,347
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29069619
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AssumeEveryoneWithASwordIsQueer/pseuds/AssumeEveryoneWithASwordIsQueer
Summary: Tag as we go. Read at your own risk.
Relationships: Bedivere/Kay (Arthurian), Galehaut/Lancelot du Lac, Guinevere/Arthur Pendragon, Isolde the Fair/Tristan (Arthurian)
Series: Because we can [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2132733
Comments: 1
Kudos: 2





	1. Wake up

They woke up everywhere. Not the people themselves, their bodies were long gone, but the spirits sleeping for nearly 2000 years. They had been reincarnated hundreds of times, but there was just _something_ different this time. Everyone could feel it, no matter where they entered the Earthly plane from once more. Overcrowded cities in England, small farms in the middle of Wales, the banks of Ireland and Scotland. They rose from the deserts and the valleys and sunk into the bodies of mothers who would otherwise be unable to carry children. All across time.

The oldest of the spirits was born from a single mother and her girlfriend in New York in 1968.

The youngest of the spirits was left on the doorstep of a nunnery as a newborn in December 2006.

There were around two hundred all together, not one knowing the other until May of 2021, but only around twenty or thirty stuck around, those were the ones who would really change the world. These people and their rulers coming back meant one thing and one thing alone. Albion's time of greatest need had arrived, but there was no plauge, no utterly t _errible_ monarchs or ministers, there was no horrible war or anything that posed a threat other than the disagreement of citizens.

Only five of the Important People had been born in the area that was once Albion.

Quickly the gods and mistresses in Avalon sorted out one thing. Albion had evolved. Not in the way you're probably thinking about. There was no physical change, as it didn't have a body. Albion, at some point had become just like Camelot. An idea, a promise. It became a whisper of hope in a child's ear when they were losing faith. Albion was influence where Camelot was a promise. 

Albion's influence on a twisted and darkening world was fading, and no amount of imaginative writers could save it. And so, it was decided they would remember and begin the search for each other at fourteen, when almost everyone had started fighting for a cause. The cause coming was bigger than any other. Save the influence of Albion, find each other, make an impact, and save the world.

The time of the round table had come again, the knights didn't know it, the public would never know it and not a single soul, living or otherwise, was ready.

Being ready, much like chivalry after World War One, was becoming an outdated concept.


	2. Dizziful bliss

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Arthur's beginning is more rocky than others.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I screwed up, ignore the work titled because we can with this same chapter okay? It doesn't exist.

He remembered at homecoming in a small town in Middle of nowhere California, 1995. He was a freshman, it was the first and last school dance he attended. It started as flashes of what felt like memories of a dream behind his eyes whenever he blinked. It ended with him seizing on the floor as his past life took the wheel.

Arthur woke up in the hospital eight hours later with his parents, or at least the people who brought his body into the world at his bedside. He didn’t go back to that school, and he was never the same. He watched every movie, read every book, listened to every song. Everything there was about swords in lakes and stones, about mystical women lurking in the water, of knights, and Holy cups and promises of peace and unity.

Arthur’s body changed when he was fifteen, shifting. He got about two inches shorter, his hair got lighter, turning blonde where it was once dark brown until he finally blamed the summer sun and his mom let him bleach it. His eyes, once vibrantly blue, became such a dark brown they were once black. He found himself not wanting to stand out in the physical sense, like he needed the protection. Wearing less and less bright colors.

He got in a fist fight that broke his nose when he was sixteen, but he knocked the guy out. Arthur had never known, nor learned how to fight before then. Despite becoming unrecognizable to the people around him, he recognized himself better than ever when he could stand to look at his reflection. He never told anyone. Surly, they would think he’d gone mad.

Perhaps he was, because when Arthur was eighteen, he long left his dreams of becoming an engineer behind. He applied to some colleges in England. He would’ve preferred Wales, but he failed French and wasn’t about to try learning Welsh to go to school there and drown in debt in a foreign country. He switched his major to Mythology and preservation library science and got into Oxford.

It was a hiking trip and a dare from a drunk friend when an equally drunk Arthur yanked a sword from a boulder. He kept it, and swore to never use it, but he found himself taking fencing classes and sword play until he learned to fight. One day, the blade shattered on the helmet of his sparring partner.

He didn’t sleep that night. He failed his finals the next day and left with a 2.5 GPA, barely clinging to his degree. Arthur stopped being able to sleep longer than an hour or two. He was put on antidepressants, but they didn’t help him. An empty void was forming in his chest and it was not going away anytime soon.

But he knew it would a little bit. He knew because he watched the faces of people to see if he recognized someone he had never met nor seen in this life Arthur would not rest until his queen and his knights, his son, his brothers, were home again too. There were only seven billion people in the world, it wouldn’t be that hard, would it? 

He met Guinevere,  _ re _ met her, in a McDonalds in England. He was on a research mission of an ancient castle. Mythology and Archaeology graduates from all around the world were on it, Arthur was lucky to have even been considered for it. Getting to go was nothing short of a miracle. It was a lunch break, and he went to the closest and cheapest place, diet be damned.

He had six chips in his mouth when she walked in. He had never seen her before, though her jacket designated her as being on the team whose shift started an hour before Arthur’s ended. He recognized everything all the way up to the way she walked and her only having one double pierced ear. He hadn’t meant to stare at her as she walked up to the counter, but something deep in his bones was screaming at him to go talk to her, because that was his wife, from another life, but still undeniably _ her.  _

When she turned around to find a booth, her bright green eyes made contact with his. A connection sparked, and he watched Jenny’s eyes roll back in her head right before the same happened to him. Their life together, once again. 

Guinever got her bearings a lot faster than Arthur did, as in a mess of baggy clothes, bony limbs and long, stringy dyed purple hair, she ran over to his table and slid into the booth right across from him,

“Hi, this seems so weird, but is your name Artie, or Art, something like that? I think we’ve met somewhere, I mean- obviously we’re on the same project but…” she trailed off, frazzled and out of breath, and she’d unconsciously reached out, now gripping his wrist. He smirked.

“Arthur Penn, and I do believe you and I have met before- Just...not y’know, in this millennia, or life. Is your name some variation of oh, I don’t know…  _ Guinevere _ ”, he asked shakily, hoping the name rang a bell. If her eyebrows shooting up were anything to go by, it most definitely had.

“I’m Jenny Leo. Yes. I..I’ve been looking and I don’t know what for, and it’s like- I kind of feel”.. She trailed off, sighing in defeat. Arthur offered a chicken nugget. He didn’t know what else to say or do with her. It was a bit startling to meet your beloved wife you almost burned at the stake again, 1487 years later, in a fast food restaurant in the middle of England.

“A puzzle with nearly all the pieces missing?” he asked tentatively, his brain crying out for her not to leave again, though it was technically  _ him _ that left. He had left the living world, after all.

“Yes!” Guinever exclaimed, loudly enough that half the establishment started at the two of them for a good ten seconds. She had been raised by a single dad with five older brothers in New Jersey. She didn’t know quiet. Her memories had come much more smoothly than Arthur’s.

“So… I’m broke.. lIke broke broke, but can I take you out to dinner anyway?” he asked, brushing a strand of hair out of her face and tucking it behind her ear, a habit from over a thousand years ago. Was that weird for having just met again?

No, she was already holding his hand in a McDonalds in middle of nowhere, England. If anything, she was the weird one this time around.

“Sure”. Guinever paid that night after much protest from Arthur.

They got married six months later in 2003, and began their unrelenting search for the knights and their family, if they still had family, and neither would rest until they found everyone. Even if it took nearly two decades.


	3. Shallows

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lancelot could argue that his remembering went a lot smoother than Arthur's. Galehaut's willing to say otherwise.

Lance was raised in a seaside village in France, moved to America when he was seven. “Culture shock” was putting it lightly. New language, new customs, new learning. Everything. He never made friends. He would have liked to blame it on living in a new country, but he hadn’t ever fit in in France either. 

He spent most of his free time in the water, he had a strange connection to the water that he couldn’t quite explain. He was thirteen when his mother told him he couldn’t visit his father because his father was dead. It was a trip he’d been looking forward to since he was seven.. He wasn’t going to be told his dad died overseas, but his mom couldn’t afford to support him in a foriegn country, nor could she pack everything up and go back to France.

He was fourteen when she left him at the Orphanage somewhere in Michigan. He remembered when he was swimming with school acquaintances close enough to be called friends. He had dove to the bottom of the pool on a dare when he saw everything.

He saw all the friends he killed for the sake of his love that had no place with a married woman, all the foes slain for a cause the rest simply couldn’t see. He witnessed himself succumb to corruption and honey dipped lies again and again until everyone he loved had been ripped away. He saw himself helping shoulder the burden of a grand kingdom that simply couldn’t be.

A few hours and a lot of lungfuls of water later he woke up in the ER with stitches and no one to come discharge him from the Hospital for a week. Despite this, his remembering went a lot more smoothly than others. When he ran away from the system at fifteen, he promised himself he’d carry Arthur’s banner and bow to his queen’s commands no matter the price.

He lived on his own, living through the winter’s in people’s lakeside cabins he broke into. Not that those people would be back until summer again. In the summer he spent his time posing as a camp counselor. All he had to say was that he was a homeless minor and nobody looked twice. 

He got a used car from the 80’s that barely worked with the fifty cents over minimum wage he made working as an aquarium janitor. He dropped out junior year.

He never felt lost, even in a tiny one bedroom apartment in Iceland with no air conditioner.

Galehaut had always felt lost. He remembered that one life the day of his parent’s funeral, and got through his first two years of college on a baseball scholarship before he decided there were better things to do. He worked at a used bookstore a little outside  Reykjavík for three years, searching for someone and something that had been just out of reach. He’d lived that way for as long as he could remember. Longing to see the face of a certain champion of Arthur’s for the nearing ten years since he’d remembered everything while standing at his uncle’s grave.

It was a half hour before his aunt closed up shop and business had been slow when the bell rang signaling someone coming in. He didn’t look up from his desk top screen as he spoke.

“Hello, welcome to the library of the lost and found, what can I… Do I need to call an ambulance?” he suddenly asked as he looked up at this person.

Lancelot could understand this man with a slightly familiar voice’s shock upon seeing him. He had gotten in between an angry man and his wife at the bar down the street. He took a bottle to the head and a fist in his chest. He was limping because he twisted his ankle running down the stairs out of the loud cacophony of the bar with his hands over his ears. He couldn’t stand to go back to his apartment in the noise and bright lights of the city, just to go back to the aquarium to work all through the night and get paid at least ten thousand less than the job was worth and then get deadnamed and interrogated when he called his mom.

All he wanted was a quiet place to think, and the bookstore with no cars in the parking lot seemed like his best option. He frantically shook his head.

“N-no, I-I just need to get the glass out of my hair and wash away the blood. Just… Is there a bathroom I can use and a quiet place to think? I’ll be out of the way after….” he trailed off as he looked up into his eyes, bright green set in an olive face with red-brown hair of a very tall man looking to be around 22 or 23, a year or so older than him. His eyes rolled back in his head after that as the memories came back to him in a violent rush.

Eyes locking across the battlefield, a forbidden and secret relationship in low candlelight, darkened hallways and under tangled sheets. Two close lovers torn apart by the misfortune of fate and a time that could never understand. Galehaut got his bearings faster than Lancelot did.

“Is it really you?” he asked. If this was really Lancelot, it would surely explain the sudden sense that he belonged for once, but he couldn’t believe it. After all this time.

“Galehaut”? Lancelot asked. He was shaking. Galehaut forced himself up from where he was slouched in his chair and grabbed Lancelot by the wrist.

“Yes. Honey, I love you and we’ve got a thousand years of reconciling to do, but you’re bleeding on my carpet, you look like you haven’t had a decent night’s sleep in years and like you’re about to pass out. Let me lock up here and drive you to the hospital, we can talk about it in the waiting room after that gash on your neck is stitched up, okay?” he offered, beginning to lock the front doors and shut off the lights, keeping a careful eye on Lancelot.

His maybe still lover started to say something that sounded like “okay” before his eyes fluttered shut and he collapsed to the floor. 


	4. This is home(Dinadan)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Dinadan's story is a bit more intricate than others

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is longer than I'm intending the others to be, so bear with me on it

Dinadan grew up in what was possibly the worst city in Venezuela in the history of ever, and living in the neighborhood that he did, he’d been expecting to end up getting shot at least once before he graduated. He did not, however, think people who got shot watched their past lives go by like a movie as they were dragged into the doctor’s house.

He saw all the depressed and angry faces that his jests made laugh. He saw everyone dancing to the songs he played, he saw his lyrics making everyone smile and the appalled faces of enemies realizing he was not a bard, but a spy. He saw a life of war he got roped into despite swearing to never lay harm to another soul. He saw himself working as hard as he could to spread love instead of war, and it ultimately being his downfall.

He was sent to live with his aunt up in Ireland as soon as the bullet wounds in his leg healed enough for him to walk on his own, and he never went back. He was fifteen when his appearance began to change. His eyes evolving from brown to his left turning blue and his right turning green. His hair grew, no matter how he cut it or shaved it, it was always down to at least his chin within a week, and it didn’t hold dye, coming in lighter each time until it was stark white against tan skin. 

He got kicked out when he was sixteen, seventeen when he graduated, and eighteen when he realized that he wasn’t a man. 

They got into a community college with their straight Cs when they were 21 and dropped out when they were 22. They moved to Dublin working as a freelance writer, making enough money to live in a small house behind the petrol station and keep the lights on. 

Dinadan became a party clown as a second job when they were 25, traveling around the world in a circus, not because they wanted to make a living off their sense of humor, but because they were looking for their fellow knights and their rulers. They wrote songs, waiting for the day that their words would reach the ears they meant them for. They bought a guitar and learned to play it while they were on a gig in Germany.

They got picked up as the singer and guitarist of a shady Alt Rock band when they were 27, playing outside a bar a few months after their aunt’s funeral. It was far from their first show about two years later, when they saw  _ them  _ right there in the front row in the middle of a song, and their fingers slipped on the strings.

When they made eye contact with those two, three lives flashed before their eyes at once, and down they went.

When they woke up backstage, Arthur and Guinevere, their king and queen,  _ right there waiting for them like they had been searching for years  _ were arguing with the security and the other two band members, Lucas and Lacy, the twins.

“Hey, how are you doing? We had the concert cancelled, you really scared everyone out there”, Stirling said, handing them a glass of water. She still hadn’t retrieved her shirt from the stage where she threw it off within drumming the first three songs. She usually did strings and piano and miscellaneous instruments as well as backing vocals, but Jake was sick so she had to take over for him.

“Yeah, I’m good. What exactly happened. I remember feeling the bad kind of hot and falling. Did I hit my head?” they asked, sitting up slowly. They could tell their arm was bruised and it felt like they twisted their ankle. They could see their guitar on the other side of the room, string broken. They felt hungover.

“No, Lacy chucked her bass into the crowd to catch you. Don’t freak out, she got it back. You got a blank stare into the audience and then you started to twitch, almost like a seizure and then your eyes rolled back in your head and went limp. Medics just left, said it was probably a heat stroke. They said to turn the fans on and give you water when you woke up. If you didn’t wake up in fifteen minutes to call 9-1-1. It hasn’t even been ten, you’re fine”, Stirling explained, handing them another glass and slowly helping them sit up. Their head was pounding a bit, but other than that they were fine.

They didn’t want to tell Stirling that a heat stroke was far from what made them pass out. Thankfully, she was already walking away and dragging Lacey away with her. Dinadan didn’t want to think about what they were probably doing.

“Oh for goodness sakes, Dinadan- These two keep swearing they know you and are close with you, do you know them?” Lucas asked. They looked up at Arthur and Guinevere, restrained by two security guards and cornered by Lucas. They didn’t even have to see their faces to fabricate an answer.

“Duh.. That’s my sister and brother in law, dipshit, did I really not tell you they were coming. My mom’s sick, I told them to come so we could discuss where she could go”, they said. They didn’t talk about their parents, who they cut off contact with over a decade prior to the band, so Lucas wouldn’t know that Dinadan had no clue if their mom was even alive, or that they were an only child. Thankfully, he wasn’t picking up on the fact that there was no way they were related to Guinevere.

“Oh, I’ll leave you three alone”

“Hey, my lord, long time no see,” they said, almost as soon as Lucas and security were gone. Arthur shook his head, coming over to the couch and throwing his arms around Dinadan’s neck.

“Oh..I’ve missed you all so much! Have you met any of the others ?” He cried, still nearly on top of Dinadan.

“You can call us by our names, kid. We aren’t royalty anymore”. Guinevere said, coming over and sitting beside them. They chose that moment to detach Arthur and shove him into the lap of his probably wife. Affectionately, of course. He was still the king to them, after all. 

“Yeah, Arthur and Jenny, back to do whatever the fuck we got reincarnated for.” Arthur said, in a terribly sign-song voice very uncharacteristic of the once noble king.

“Don’t mind him, he’s had more than a couple drinks”, Jenny explained. Calling her Jenny instead of Guinever would feel weird, but they could manage.

“You scared us there for a second”, Arthur said, throwing his legs over Dinadan’s. The king had always been a sloppy, talkative drunk and that fact evidently remained unchanged. 

“It’s okay. The first couple times you Remember or have a Recognition, you pass out or get sick. It’s normal, but it usually stops after three or four.” Jenny explained. Dinadan felt themself blanch. They’d always known there had to be others, that they weren’t crazy, they’d just never been presented with proof until just now.

Sensing the question, they said, “I’ll tell you where I’ve been all this time if you tell me where you’ve been”, they said. An hour and a half of life stories later, Arthur and Jenny had been sufficiently thanked for going along with Dinadan’s lie.

“So, who all have you found?” Dinadan asked Jenny. Arthur had been passed out on the floor at their feet for almost an hour.

“Arthur met Gawain and Mordred, but they aren’t around each other, and I’m not too keen on interacting. We know each other, I know where Lancelot is, with Galehaut- but he won’t talk to us. Sebil, Yvain and Kay have been hanging around in Africa, and we just met you, but ever since we started bouncing around shelters, we haven’t found anyone”, she said. Dinadan scanned her and Arthur’s appearance.

“Like homeless shelters?” they asked.

“We both got laid off during the pandemic, stupid government wouldn’t give us unemployment. We got evicted a year ago. We were living in my car until it was towed. Arthur didn’t drink and I didn’t smoke until a few months ago”, Jenny explained. The question was out of Dinadan’s mouth before they could stop it.

“How did you get into the concert, our front rows are almost a thousand bucks a person!”

“We snuck in”, she said. That couldn’t be doubted.

“Okay, here’s the deal. We’re touring for five months out of the year. Usually working on songs and albums for four, and when we’re in the studio, we usually stay in a shared house, but I have my own. It’s a two bedroom. I usually let the people who clean live in the guest room, but it’s the first week, so I haven’t hired anyone. If you two are willing to go pack your shit right now, I will help you get phones, shoes, work on getting you cars, then you can be living there by the end of the week. Together, you two will be making six figures. But you have to be willing to clean the house and feed my cat”, they explained. Jenny could only nod.

“Alright, wake Arthur, let’s go to the hotel” Dinadan called, already up and gathering their coat.


	5. Citizen soldier

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey, I'm working on the 2nd chapter of 'til it happens to you, I swear

Palomedes was born in Syria. He didn’t remember much about it though. HIs mother died having him and his father could only take so much. When he saw the violence beginning to unfold in the wake of a certain day in september of 2001, he packed up any belongings that actually mattered and his then eight year old son and they headed to the U.S.  
All his life, Palomedes didn’t know anything but bullying and how to knock someone down in a fight. His father, quite abruptly, in fact sent him away to a boarding school in Florida.  
Florida.  
The day he learned that his father was killed in their home country fighting their own people didn’t hurt as much as the fact that it was his fourteenth birthday and his first day of highschool. He wasn’t the world’s best parent, but hey, he tried. Palomedes was willing to take that argument to the grave.  
No, what hurt was that there was no body to bury, and that he couldn’t keep anything of his old man’s. What hurt most of all, out of everything, was that he remembered everything that day, and it changed everything forever, and his dad had solutions for everything.  
Palomedes saw it all just a few minutes after being told his dad was killed overseas. He saw himself, what could be called a wandering knight that nobody really understood, fighting for Isolde’s hand. His weird, love-hate relationship with Tristan that eventually bled into Isolde to. There were some sick people out there who might have called it love. He saw himself as the older brother, doing anything to protect his siblings, going as far as to make them both knights, maybe slightly against their will, to keep them safe.  
And when he opened his eyes, Palamedes swore to find his brothers, both literally and through the table. He found a lot of them. Ones that were moving on, ones that only added so much, some would say. And they were moving on with their lives, living as much as they could. Palomedes didn’t go to college.  
He enlisted the hour he turned 18. It was strange to be back in Syria, but when he could actually venture out, there was no nostalgia, or familiarity. There was the sense that this was his home but it was so torn up and unrecognizable that he couldn’t stand anything, couldn’t stand the fact that he was fighting his own kin. Couldn’t stand that this was what his father had done and died for, and the whispers of “double agent”. That caused him more turmoil than seeing the face of every man he killed.  
Palomedes’ service was up four years after it began, and he went searching for his brothers, moving all around the world, asking around. He found them when he was 24, living in an apartment in Berlin. Moving on and living as easily as the next person who hadn’t remembered their past life on their 14th birthday. They didn’t go back to Florida with him, wanting to survive outside of the table and live a new life.  
Palomedes’ brothers deciding to stay in contact with him was the greatest mercy he’d experienced in at least five years.  
He tried to re-enlist at 27 and found himself being screened for mental health. He was turned away with benefits and half assed apologies in hand. He got a job as a welder, made decent enough money to live in a safe(ish) town and drive a car that wasn’t older than him.   
Palomedes swore up and down that he would find his brothers and sisters from Camelot if it was the last thing he did, even going so far as to tattoo the last words his father spoke to him on his wrist.  
“الأسرة إلى الأبد ، حتى لو كان"الدم أثخن من الماء اخترعه أقارب لا يستحقون”


	6. Some hearts (just get lucky sometimes)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tristan has a more complicated new beginning

Unlike others, Tristan and Isolde knew each other before they remembered. They were both raised in Ireland. Tristan had been born in Cornwall, but his parents moved to Dublin when he was two. Isolde’s family lived in the apartment above them. Despite the fact that she was nearly two years younger, they became very close friends.

Inseparable. They went to school together, learned how to swim together, went to their first dance together, but it could never be called something beyond friendship.

Tristan remembered on his fourteenth birthday. He remembered it so clearly it was as if he’d been ripped back in time, watching at least twenty five years go by in the span of an hour. He saw it all in such a short span of time that it didn’t feel real. 

He saw everything. His lover, a beautiful woman from Ireland so fair and wonderful. She loved  _ him,  _ of all knights, but there was her husband, Mark, and Palomedes, a foreign knight fighting for Isolde’s hand that Tristan wouldn’t deny having an eye for occasionally. He saw pledging his loyalty to Arthur, and Bangraine’s betrayed face when she discovered him in bed with Isolde, and the trickery of sail colors that brought about both his and Isolde’s fate, and the beautiful oak tree with the vine spindled around it, sprouting up from the grave the two were so mercifully allowed to share.

He was later told that he had stared at his father then his eyes rolled back and he face planted into the cake. Isolde was sitting by him when he woke up in the hospital. Isolde, two years younger than him, who would surely remember soon. Isolde, still innocent somehow. Isolde, who he would later find to have correctly assumed, would remember when she turned fourteen. Isolde, who he was willing to lay his life down to protect.

He ignored her when he was discharged, talked his parents into moving to a different part of the city so that he could start high school somewhere else. He and Isolde only saw each other in passing. Tristan did everything in his power to avoid her, but it never seemed to work. She was always there, like a ghost haunting his memory. He met Palomedes in a bar when he was 24. ‘Medes seemed reluctant to trust him, but given their relationship, if it could be called that, it was understandable his mind would travel to the past. After he’d been living with the veteran for a few months, it was quickly realized that the more things changed, the more they remained the same, but none of the violence came back.

They decided to move to Iceland when they had both passed thirty and nothing particularly remarkable other than finding Segramore stripping at a club in Vegas while they were trying to hunt down other members of the table. They lived two years in Iceland before meeting anyone. Palomedes didn’t know the half giant he walked into while they were in the Dollar Store trying to figure out if the cashier was really Isolde. Tristan barely knew him, but he knew him well enough.

“Galehaut?”Tristan asked, having turned around upon hearing his friend’s startled shriek. He couldn’t see Galehaut’s face through the mask, but he knew he was smiling because of his eyes. It would be foreshadowing that would haunt everyone in the store in ten years, but that was a conversation for later. The necessary Components wouldn’t even be all together until late 2021. No actions against the Dark Ones would be taken until mid 2023. 

“Yes, it’s me. Oh, wow, I didn’t Flash this time”. He muttered the last part.

“What?” Palomedes demanded, pulling out the sharp, commanding tone that Tristan rarely heard unless he was hiding his accent.

“Flashing. Arthur came up with it. It’s when we recognize each other and your eyes go back in your head-   
“ And you remember multiple lives at once, but it stops after four times. After that you just seem to know” Tristan cut him off. The half giant nodded.

“Yes, exactly”

“Wait, if you know Arthur, what are you doing in Iceland? Aren’t he and Jenny in Texas?” Palomedes finally worked up the nerve to but into the conversation. Tristan knew his friend had already come across the former rulers of Albion, but it either hadn’t gone well, or had gone so awkwardly things didn’t last long, as ‘Medes never really talked about it.

“Well, you know how those two felt about uprooting us from our lives with no warning, and that was more than a lifetime ago. Arthur is honestly scared to have more than a few of us in close proximity to each other, and he’s convinced it’ll seem like he’s leaving people out. Jenny wants to wait, but for who or what, she didn’t say.” Galehaut explained, he was texting someone, but Tristan didn’t have the energy to wonder about it.

“Do you know anyone else?” Tristan asked, interested and a deep wanting to finally come home that had no explanation. He was homesick, but not very, as though he was coming home again. He’d never been to Iceland, let alone the capitol, but felt no confusion that he otherwise would.

“Yes. I’m close with Dinadan, but their band is always on tour so I don’t get to see them often. Isolde lives right down the street from us, she has for years-that cashier is a doppelganger. Lancelot lives with me, we- we’re married, and everything feels so put together, even though Lamorak is living with us right now. He’s doing some foreign studies thing. He was born in Australia this time around.” the half- giant continued to explain. As he kept talking, the three of them had almost subconsciously walked out of the store together and were headed for the most muddy, unkempt van they’d ever seen. Palomedes grabbed Tristan by the elbow to stop him.

“I’ll follow you two in the truck, tell me if anything interesting happens”, he said. No fear of being kidnapped or murdered or both had slipped into their brains and they wouldn’t notice until years later that things could’ve gone horribly wrong if Lancelot, Isolde or Lamorak decided they didn’t like them, or if Galehaut had been  _ that _ type of person.

The inside of the van was much tidier than the outside. There were also no backseats and enough grocery bags to fill the Pacific.

“Lance, Isolde and I own a restaurant. It doesn’t get much funding so each week one of us goes out and buys all the food”Galehaut offered the answer to Tristan’s unspoken question.

“Got it. Hey what was with the mask, and all these bags”? Tristan asked, wanting to get off the topic of the found family he’d lost and just recently found that made his heart feel like it weighed a thousand tons. He simply asked the first thing that came to mind, there were a lot of odd medical looking things in the space between the passenger and driver’s seat.

“I don’t know for sure, but you know how there were a lot of things that didn’t make sense about a lot of us back then. It comes back when you remember, slowly. Dinadan started losing their sight again about four years ago. Remember how I… died. It seemed like my body gave up. Well, it basically did. My immune system doesn’t work, so I need that mask when I go in public because getting a sore throat can be a life or death situation for me, but- this is where it gets weird. Do you feel more calm, less tired or sick around the other reincarnated knights?” Galehaut asked. 

Was Galehaut speeding? It felt like he was speeding. Tristan looked at the meter. Nope- 33 kilometers an hour in a populated area.

It really felt like they were speeding. Tristan couldn’t think.

“You can’t tell Lance I let you know, but, well...you remember how he was a lot smaller than everyone but Gawain, because he like-never ate but when he did it was a lot of the same thing?” Galehaut asked. There was a twinge of guilt in his voice that almost made Tristan regret asking. He nodded anyway.

“You know he was weird about touching certain things anyway, well his stomach literally doesn’t work, so that’s his. Oh, I need to call him so he doesn’t freak out when he gets home”, he was rambling. Tristan nodded and stared out the window. The closer he got to isolde, the more a weight seemed to lift off of him, and the more the ‘you’re gonna die’ knife twisted in his gut.


	7. All of my heart

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sebil can't say she expected it to go that way

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just in case, I need to say that I probably won't be posting anything here over the summer for Reasons, but you can come bother me on tumblr @pandemoodium.

Sebil’s beginning went a lot more smoothly than anyone could’ve expected from one with a past like her’s. She was raised a witch, with a convent around her, and a deep connection to both her friend, Morgan and the past life she couldn’t quite remember. When she remembered who she was, she didn’t hesitate to say things, finding that both Morgan, and another friend of hers named Merlyn, both remembered it as well, some of their memories overlapped.

The other two were more than happy to stay where their remembering was embraced, and to live in the last place where people would judge them. They didn’t have the same sense of longing Sebil had had since she turned fourteen and remembered it all. Remembered the weight of the crown on her head. Remembered the whisper of magic on her fingers and Morgan’s on her skin. Remembered her background help handed to Camelot for so much of her life.How Guinevere was more than willing to kiss her again if it meant she’d hide her one more night. She watched as a slightly older and much more broken version of herself on the sidelines of battle after battle, watching the kingdom she so carefully helped to build falling to pieces.

When she decided to leave her soul siblings in search of a family so close yet so far, she begged Morgan to go with her, knowing she remembered exactly what Sebil did, but again and again she was met with refusal, a desire to not make the same mistakes again, which was understandable in every sense, but something Sebil had been able to easily detach herself from.

She was twenty one when she had enough money and enough nerve to leave and begin her search. Sebil would never forget the look Morgan had in the rearview as she drove away. She ended up living just outside of Paris in an apartment with no air conditioning and a couple that never stopped smoking who knows what upstairs. 

Sebil was twenty-seven when she finally left, moving closer to the coast and looking into schools that would accept someone into their program. She had been working three jobs in highschool and dropped out two months before she graduated, because the people who brought her into the world for that life sure as hell weren’t going to pay to keep the lights on and the water running.

Sebil was thirty when she rediscovered her magic at the scene of a wreck that should’ve killed her instantly. It was raining. It was raining and she knew she shouldn’t have been going that fast but she had located others from her old home and she wanted so badly to find them.

The car flipped, and in a flash of blue light, the car went rolling,rolling,rolling down the cliff she was driving along and Sebil was sitting on the side of the road, energy pulsing out of her hands, the smell of a powerful electric current in the air and her once bone straight hair shocked into curls.

She made herself scarce when the sirens began wailing. Sebil was thirty two when she changed her name and found Kay and Bedivere, also in a desperate search for people who seemed very reluctant to be found. 

Sebil, then thirty four, got a call at 230 AM while living in a hotel in Gordes that changed her life forever. It was the middle of 2017, she didn’t think anything remotely remarkable could happen to her. And then Bedivere said _ it. _

“Sebil, you’re not gonna believe this”, he said. Just like Kay, Yvain, a very distant Morgan and Elyan, his old accent from the previous life was returning and he could speak Welsh again. It seemed to happen to everyone ten years after regaining their memories. She pushed her magic into the landline that had no business still existing to see what was going on. 

He was on the edge of a rickety old looking bed in the dimly lit room of what was probably a hotel. He was whispering into a phone he should’ve replaced in the 90s, probably to avoid waking the sleeping form next to him, who couldn’t be anyone but Kay.

“I don’t know, Bed, I’ve seen and heard some rather unbelievable things since I started remembering”, she said, pulling her magic back before she busted the call line.

“We found Arthur and Jenny. They’ve found a lot of knights, or people associated with us. A lot of them moved on and they all had perfectly valid reasons to do so, but the ones that have stuck around and stayed in touch have all agreed on one thing”, he paused, and Sebil urged him on. She wasn’t one for suspense.

“Everyone has this...almost sixth sense, so do the people who moved on but it’s not nearly as strong. There’s something coming, we don’t know when, who, what, where or how, but it’s going to be big. I mean, it was said that Art and all of us would come back in Albion’s time of greatest need, but Kay and I remembered in the 80s, nothing significant, Arthur remembered in the 90s, nothing significant. Yvain remembered in the 2000s, nothing significant, now by that I mean, nothing that could cause our return. It’s 2015, and still nothing, so what can it be?” Bedivere asked. As he spoke, his voice had gotten louder, and she could hear Kay grumbling in the background.

“Don’t listen to Bed and his conspiracies. Think about it. When we were around the first time Albion was the area of England, Wales, Scotland, even Ireland and Gual if we want to get technical, but nothing has happened to draw us there, so maybe we’re not being drawn back into the fabric of Albion, maybe Camelot, Albion, the world’s magic, all that jazz, is being drawn to us. I mean, those of us who had abnormalities back in the day still have them, and anyone who had some sort of illness way back when has them returning, so maybe.``... Kay trailed off, and Sebil could feel his confusion even without reaching with her abilities.

“Maybe you should book me a flight to houston”, she said.


End file.
